Now watching this weeks #coverscan webinar on #longcovid. Looking forward to hearing more from Dr Andrea Dennis, Head of Translational Science at Perspectum, responsible for writing up much of the Coverscan work to date. https://coverscan.com/news-%26-updates

Dr Rajarshi Banerjee kicks us off by saying that #LongCovid is increasingly being acknowledged as “a thing” in the medical profession despite residual “head in the sand” pockets of resistance. (That’s progress right?!)

He states that a new sub-study on auto-immune liver disease has been started. “Some people with chronic disease or immune-suppression appear to be protected from #CV19 and #longcovid so we are going to be looking into this”

Dr Andrea Dennis shows the proportion of organ abnormality in #longcovid sufferers. This graph is worth looking at. The grey are controls and the black / pink are study patients. Concerning findings in liver, heart, pancreas and lungs (from data so far from 201/507 patients)

The heat map attempts to show clusters of symptoms and where (which organs) these might be coming from. Hard to draw conclusions at this stage. Making progress but lots of Qs to still answer.

I thought this slide was worth sharing, particularly the 4 suggested mechanisms driving #longcovid

Dr Dennis now refers us to this study in Nature Medicine. This study highlights connection between organ dysfunction and ongoing symptoms. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01283-z

Why does all this matter? 10% of #CV19 suffers develop #longcovid. In U.K. this is 186K people with up to 200K off work. @LaylaMoran, Chair of @APGroover estimates cost to UK of £2.5bn per annum. Similar to cost of rheumatoid arthritis. Social and economic impact is HUGE. Ouch.

Dr Dennis now highlights 5 key studies ongoing in UK
The REACT Study,
CLoCK Study ( #LongCovidKids)
TLC Study (therapeutic investigation)
A partner study to CLoCK study (with a long acronym!)
BioBank (harness big data)
(all links are on the #coverscan website)

Interesting. Liver fat is being looked at as a predictor for #CV19 hospitalisation. Findings suggest you are 5x more likely to be hospitalised if you have elevated liver fat levels. Important for policy making on shielding and prioritising vaccinations.